Today, every single product is positioned as need based solution. Can you deny the need to save for child’s education, self retirement, safeguard family’s health & build wealth in long term? It is difficult to see the advantages of any investment when approached by a good salesman.

The world has evolved to a global state & so do any company or salesman. I would rather term them all as HAWKERS. They position the product so well that customers fall for sales pitch & buy it.

Game plan of HAWKERS: IF you have child, you require Child Plan. If you have family, you must have medical insurance. You also need Retirement Plan.

Result: You buy costly child Ulips & guaranteed plans, complex medical policies, inflexible pension plans. They push you to diversify across Stocks, gold, property, bonds, bank FD, PPF & other complex options. If you can’t afford a new home, bigger car, or foreign holiday, they will get you to leverage on future income.

You take a home loan, a car loan, a personal loan & you also collect few credit cards in bargain. This is sure shot recipe for financial worries. Use the magic word to safeguard your finances against such perils, make you rich & protect you from friends offering free advice, wealth managers, money quacks, banks, insurance companies, bank relationship managers, insurance agents who are trying to sell you something or other.

Magic word: No, Nahi, Nako, Na, Venda, Nahim, Illa, Illai.

‘NO’ is a very powerful word. Use it ruthlessly. Say ‘NO’ to the relative who wants to sell you an endowment insurance policy. Turn down bank executive who is pushing a pension plan. Refuse the offer of free add-on card from Credit Card Company. Don’t agree to buy child plan that costs a bomb.

Majority of salaried employees ignore the individual health insurance and depend on mediclaim/health insurance provided by their employer (office health policy). Observations in many cases; the cover provided by the employer are insufficient to counter the growing hospitalization expenses.

Which are the reasons one shouldn’t depend on health cover from the employer, and have a individual health insurance or a top-up on hospitalisation product?

The prime purpose of group health insurance is to protect the employer from any mishappenings related to a employee’s health.

The employer gives cover for 1-5 Lakhs. It is insufficient as for major illness like heart bypass, Cancer package starts from 3.5 Lakhs.

Employer – employee is a group cover product where coverage is constant & not increasing. You can increase the coverage by paying additional premium.

There are certain limitations on specific diseases or surgeries.

It is normally seen, employees cover their complete family in this product.

In health insurance, there are age slabs which also convey the risk. Covering complete family with different age slabs increases the risk of not getting covered completely.

These products are not inflation proof. It barely covers the employee with no additional benefits.

No Claim Bonus is not available in any group cover. It is provided in personal health cover to suffice the additional costs in coming years if you are not claiming in respective year.

Your employer won’t cover you after your retirement.

If you are thinking; I will buy health insurance just before retirement, think again? Because something happens during this period there is a possibility you don’t get health insurance as your application might get rejected due to medical history or you will be charged loading (extra premium) to cover the risk.

The government has increased 80D limit, Government wants its citizens to have enough health insurance as it protects individual from financial liability.

Recently, Government is giving health insurance cover of 5 Lakhs for 50 crores people who are Below Poverty Line. If Government is taking care of their citizens, why you are shying away for taking care of your own family?

Also, it costs average Rs 10000 – 15000 which is very small amount as compared to any medical bills of Rs 2-3 Lakhs.

So it’s always advisable to have a individual health insurance to cover self & family.

I will address the various types of protection requirements in this series.

A Pure Term Insurance or Pure Vanilla Insurance is the basic step of Financial Planning. It will take care all the financial need & requirements of a family in the absence of a breadwinner or earner of the family.

Vanilla is termed as basic; which also means without any additional feature or optional riders.

Term plan is a life insurance risk mitigation policy that provides coverage for a certain period of time & will ensure the financial protection for the family. A term life insurance policy is a pure life cover. This is the cheapest form of life insurance cover.
A person can take 10 or 15 times cover of his annual income.

I always advise my clients to increase the coverage on every block of 3 to 5 years to be inline with income increase.

This can be taken by any individual who is working and having financial documents like salary slips, businessmen filing Income Tax returns for 3 years or more.

Note of prime importance:

If you have already taken a term cover, any change in your personal habits, lifestyle changes, contracting of new diseases, surgery etc has to be intimated to your insurance company in writing along with medical reports for better claim settlement process.

How a Term plan works

Dr. Ganesh, age 30, a Doctor, has 2 dependants – his parents and his wife. Ganesh’s annual income is 10 lakhs is good enough to support his family, but he is concerned. Since he is the sole breadwinner, his dependants could be under tremendous financial stress in the event of his sudden & unfortunate death. Therefore, to mitigate the risk, Ganesh is considering buying a Term Plan.

He can get a term cover of RS 1 Crore for a policy tenure of 30 years (working age) for an annual premium of around Rs 8,500 – 9,500. The cheapest available option to claim a large cover.

In fact, by paying just 1 percent of his annual income, Dr. Ganesh will be getting a life cover of Rs. 1 Crore.

So in the event of Dr. Ganesh’s sudden & unfortunate death, An Insurance company will give a cheque of 1 Crore to the nominee (dependable parents or wife or both). So this money can be used to take care of financial needs of the family as a sole earner of the family is no more.

Benefits of Term Plan

Low premium: The premium for a term plan is relatively lower than all other insurance plans because there is no investment element in the amount insured.

Protects family against the financial loss of income: A sudden death of a sole earner of the family is a huge stress on the family as the income is stopped but the daily requirements need to be met.

So take the first step in order to ensure the financial protection of your family by taking a Vanilla Term Plan.